Stairway to Here

Twenty-five years ago tonight I stood at the bottom of what appeared to be a very, very long staircase - an impossible-to-navigate staircase, like through wacky glasses in length - wondering what the fungula I was up to this time. I had run through quite a few bright ideas in my extremely long and exhausting 28 years, and this was just another to me - but was it? I had to admit, I did have a feeling in the pit of my stomach that wasn't my usual dread, and it also wasn't anything I could remember feeling before, but COME ON, AA? Wow. How dramatic. I mean, really, I wasn't THAT bad.

Not that I knew anything about how bad you had to be. Or what bad even was.

I figured I was like heading upstairs into a room filled with unshaven, slovenly older men, some in trench coats with few teeth, some in plaid flannel, most former working-class heroes, all divorced and depressed. Wow. But I knew I was in trouble and I knew I didn't know what to do and I remembered being told years before by an old drinking pal, Jack, who went from wearing hand-made Italian suits and working with the Rockefellers to...an unshaven slovenly old man...telling me about the program and how he thought it was where I'd end up eventually. I hated him at the time and conveniently forgot about all he said for a few years until the night before my pausing at the bottom of the very, very long staircase.

The night before: by far, not the worst night of my drinking/drugging career, but it was what it was. I came out of a blackout in a bar that I'm pretty sure was Elaine's because it was around the corner from my house. The last thing I remembered on coming out of the blackout was it had just been about 8:00, and I was pushing a large, heavy piece of furniture in front of my apartment door in the hope that it would deter me from leaving home once I cracked open the last of the brandy I had left in the house. I had become...discouraged...by my blackouts as they weren't fun stories to tell my friends anymore, like when I woke up in [famous person name]'s bed or once in another country. Gives a new meaning to forgetting where you parked the car when you wake up in a completely different country and makes for a pretty funny story when you've still got wit - oh, yeah, and friends to tell it to. But of late, most of my friends were gone and I was coming to in places that weren't very funny with people that were very, very scary. Like people who hung out in burnt-out buildings in Spanish Harlem, only had first names and didn't necessarily speak English.

Alas, that night, furniture or no, I must have gotten out and been who-knows-where again, landing my ass on a barstool near home as the sun was coming up through the barroom window. I came up talking to a group of hookers about the perils of being a working girl, as if I had any idea what I was talking about, being a one-track, non-stop, where's-the-drugs-minded girl. And I looked down to find yet another unexplainable gash, this time in my knee, complete with half-dried blood running down my leg and in need of stitches. And this time, finally, I had the thought form itself in whole - WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO ME!! I looked up and caught my face in the mirror behind the bottles - WHY?!?! WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?!?! is my thought when - BAM!

A tiny little voice that has not made it's way to the surface before, maybe ever, says, "It's you, Nancy. It's the booze. It's the drugs. It's the end. It has to be..." I didn't hear the rest, because I couldn't, not then, but I heard it the next night. The end of that sentence was "...or you're dead."

And the next day I find myself at the bottom of that very, very long staircase after making a phone call to a number from the yellow pages and talking to some stranger who I think I told something about my needing to do research (riiiight, never heard that one before).

And I did NOT feel well, no. I could not get up them stairs above the Hungarian Literary Society on 79th Street and Lexington in New York City, no way. I did not have enough breath nor life left in me to make it that far that day alone.

But the door opens and in walks a biker dude, who takes one look at me and offers me his arm. Not a word, just his arm and a smile, maybe a half-laugh, and up the staircase he helps me. It turns out there are actually two flights and by the top of the second I'm weeping with impossible weariness, sick and shaking. He never said a word to me, just led me to the door, smiled, bowed, then worked his way into the crowd.

What? A crowd? Of normal looking people who are loud and laughing and have all their teeth. Someone calls the meeting to order and I take a seat across the room in the back row. As I sit, I am aware that I better sit on my ever-shaking hands to make them stop, or someone might notice and think I'm an alcoholic.

The meeting starts and the guy says his name and they all say "Hi Irwin" in unison and I think, WTF, get me out of this room of cult zombies, but I don't move and not because I don't want to - because I've looked down and realized that my dress is on inside out and I'm afraid someone might notice. And Irwin starts to tell his story and I don't really hear anything until he says that he's from Minnesota and I'm from Minnesota too and this tiny, beensy little connection is the biggest connection I've had to another human being in a very, very, very long time and it makes me start to cry big time and now I don't want to go and I don't. I don't leave and I talk to women and they tell me to do 90 meetings in 90 days and don't drink or drug, even if your ass falls off, and I believe them (a miracle in itself) and I don't drink and I don't drug, even when my ass is falling off and then they tell me a lotta, lotta, lotta, lotta other things and I believe (most) of them too. And I haven't had a drink or a drug from that day until this.



July 17, 1985 to July 17, 2010. The longest I've ever done anything other than breathe in my entire life. So far, so good.

My pal Jack wasn't so fortunate. I saw him in meetings off and on over the years, but he never got it and he died a drunk. Most of us actually do.

But he's the one who turned me onto the Stairway to Here. And for that I am forever grateful.